Otouto
by kaliawai512
Summary: Mokuba can't sleep. And late one night after Duelist Kingdom, he decides to pay Seto a visit. After all, Nii-sama isn't just head of KaibaCorp. He's his big brother. Even if Mokuba sometimes isn't sure if he's worth Seto's protection. Pre-Battle City.


**I actually started writing this back in May, on my birthday. No idea why. I think I just got inspiration really late at night, as often happens. I went back to it in late June and early July to finish it up, so you may find a bit of the writing style of "Birds" in the early portions of this (since at that time, "Birds" was all I had written), even though it's based on the Japanese anime—and was, in fact, my first attempt to write based on that instead of the dub.**

**It's shorter than a lot of my pieces, which sort of surprised me. But it's also got more dialogue and more "scene." For those that don't know, Seto and Mokuba's mother died before their father. It is never stated exactly when or how, merely that it was after Mokuba was born. I doubt even Mokuba knows what to make of that.**

**Non-romance, but, uh, did I really need to tell you guys that? If brotherly relationships offend you, beware! Otherwise, I kind of don't think you've got much to worry about with this one. It takes place before the beginning of Battle City, but after Seto has met with Ishizu in the museum. Is this sort of a prequel to my other Kaiba brothers fic, "Kyou Dake"? In a way, yes.**

**I hope you all enjoy. Please leave a review when you're done!**

_Otouto_

It had been a very long time since Mokuba had gotten the chance to just sit down and think.

Of course, he had done a lot of thinking back when he was locked away on Pegasus's island, and as soon as he had set foot on the ground back in Domino City, he had been sure that he didn't want to think about anything that hard ever again.

It seemed his wish had been granted.

He stretched and rolled his head back as he sat on the edge of his bed. It bounced at his weight, and a few random strings of memory blew through his head of two young boys jumping on the mattresses in their room, and standing guilty a few moments later when the headmistress burst through the door, only to break into hysterical laughter as soon as she left.

It had been a very long time since he had heard his brother laugh.

Nii-sama hadn't spoken to him much lately. Well, technically speaking, he _had, _but Mokuba didn't consider requests for status updates on the Duel Disk much of a conversation. Mokuba ate dinner alone. He was used to it, and the cooks always made his favorites, but even chocolate parfait desserts could come to taste like celery when you ate them alone in the upstairs lobby.

He thought about lying down and pulling the covers over him and going to sleep for a long time. He was tired. One of the receptionists had once commented that he was far too tired far too often for a boy his age, about a week before Nii-sama fired her for slacking.

He wasn't going to be a slacker. Nii-sama needed him. Right?

Mokuba let out a very long and very loud sigh and swung his legs forward, touching his bare feet to the soft, cool carpet and rolling his shoulders to adjust his pajamas on his body. They were getting too small for him. Again. He wondered if Nii-sama noticed he was going through another growth spurt.

He began to walk.

He didn't have a particular destination in mind when he started moving. He creaked open the door so no one would hear that he was still up—a few of the more old-fashioned servants seemed determined that even though the Kaiba mansion was more of a second base for business and he worked as a sort-of unpaid assistant to his brother, he should have a proper bedtime—and walked with his quietest steps down the hall. He didn't notice the turns he took, but he told himself that he wasn't making them on purpose.

Indeed, it took him by such a surprise that he backtracked a step when he found himself staring at the large door that led to Nii-sama's new home office. The one with the bookshelf and the couch and the TV, even though Nii-sama never sat on the couch and he never watched the TV. Mokuba furrowed his brow.

No … he had watched the news a few days ago, that one afternoon. When that woman from Egypt …

Mokuba shook his head.

He stood there for a very long time in front of that door. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He hardly even _breathed, _though he knew he must have even if he didn't notice it. If he listened _really _hard, he almost thought he could hear his brother's breathing on the other side, the sound melding in to the sound of clicking keys that made out Nii-sama's distinctly fast typing.

He slipped his hand onto the door, and decided that standing there wasn't going to get him anywhere. Even if he wasn't _entirely _sure where he was going.

He pushed on the new but horrendously creaking wood.

His eyes blinked at the overwhelming darkness, and the sound of typing stopped.

"Mokuba?"

Mokuba took several seconds adjusting to the level of light in the room—which was basically pitch black, except for the incredible glow from the monitor of his brother's computer—rubbed his eyes twice, and stepped in the rest of the way, letting the door creak shut behind him.

The glow from the screen illuminated the figure sitting in front of it, leaning to the side in his chair to see properly. Nii-sama's face looked surprisingly frightening in the odd light, but Mokuba met his gaze without a flinch.

"Hey."

His eyes adjusted again, and he watched Nii-sama blink once. Only once, as if the light somehow didn't bother him. Mokuba supposed that after all this time, he would be used to the glaring artificial glow in a dark room for hours on end. It couldn't be good for his eyesight. But no one, not even Mokuba, was daring enough to tell that fact to Nii-sama.

Nii-sama looked away from him and back to his desk. Not at the computer. Something below the computer, near the keyboard. His fingers seemed to settle again on the keys, but he did not begin to type.

"It's late," he muttered, clear and yet so obviously absent. "You should be in bed."

Mokuba glanced at his feet.

"Yeah. I know."

Silence fell over them. The sound of typing did not return, and Mokuba shuffled back and forth on the carpet if only to hear the familiar, almost calming noise of his socks against the floor. He rocked from side and side, and at last he looked back up and took a step toward the desk.

He quirked his head. "What are you looking at?"

Nii-sama's hand had moved from the keyboard and settled on whatever it was in front of him. Mokuba tip-toed closer, as if fearful that he would be sent away if noticed. He leaned to the side and peered to get a closer look. He wondered if his brother had heard him. Nii-sama sighed.

"Just … thinking."

"About what?"

Mokuba finally gave in and walked the last couple of meters without caring if Nii-sama heard. He took his place next to the big official desk by the huge window which let in the light of the stars and moon outside. They were pale, and many of them were blocked out by clouds, but it made the room seem somehow friendlier.

Nii-sama ran a finger over the small, thin, almost laminated treasure beneath his hand. It was lined with blue and matched with the shades of deep color which made out the tiny painting in the middle. His finger rested over the title.

"Is that the card you got at the museum?" Mokuba put a hand on the desk and leaned forward, suddenly painfully aware of how much growing he had yet to do. Nii-sama was sitting down, and Mokuba still had to turn his head up to try to look him in the eyes. Nii-sama didn't look at him, but his head inclined only just in his own version of a nod, and Mokuba looked back to the card. "I've never seen it before."

"It's the only one."

Mokuba tried to meet his eyes, again in vain. "Like the Blue-Eyes?"

He might have been imagining it, especially in the odd light of the room, but he _thought _he saw Nii-sama smirk. "A whole different level than that."

"Than the _Blue-Eyes?_" Mokuba let his eyes go wide and wondrous at the card in front of him on the desk. He couldn't quite make out the attack and defense points printed, but he could imagine them well enough. He breathed out slow. "Wow."

Nii-sama slipped the card into his hand and balanced it on his palm. He never touched it too roughly, never let it scrape against the wood. Nii-sama had always taken care of his rare cards, but even the Blue-Eyes had never been handled with such gentleness.

He ran the pad of his finger around two of the card's edges, and he did not meet Mokuba's eyes.

"I'm holding a tournament."

"Duel Monsters?"

Another smirk, this one obvious. "What else?"

Mokuba glanced at the oversized chair his brother sat in, and the thought crossed his mind of climbing in on his lap. He shoved it away. "Where?"

"Right here in Domino."

He put a hand on the desk and looked again at the card in Nii-sama's grasp. He could make out the title now. _The God of Obelisk. _In English, too, but working for a multinational corporation had meant he learned English years ago. He had a collection of Duel Monsters cards in a drawer in his room that Nii-sama had bought for him in America, when Mokuba was still going through that stage of gawking at anything made in a foreign country.

They would have been wonderful things to show his friends. But he didn't have time for things like that. He had work to do here.

He needed to be here for Nii-sama.

Nii-sama had been different lately. All the employees had noticed, but of course none of them said anything. They would give him second glances, and if he noticed he would glare. But most of the time he didn't notice. Not anymore. He hardly ever spoke. He just walked through the halls with this determined look in his eyes, lost in his own world, though what was going on in that world Mokuba could not for the life of him figure out.

He locked eyes with the strange creature on the Obelisk card, and he shook his head when he almost felt it staring back. "What are you gonna call it? The tournament."

"I'm having Isono think of something."

"Oh."

Nii-sama still didn't look at him when Mokuba looked up. Mokuba stared at him, but Nii-sama just stared at the card in his hand. He probably could have stuck out his tongue and pulled on his eyelid and wiggled his fingers around his ears and Nii-sama wouldn't have noticed. Mokuba wondered, even if he knew it was crazy, if there was something more to this card than Nii-sama was letting on, or perhaps more than Nii-sama even knew at all.

Cards were just cards, though. Just pieces of paper with power to win duels. And make Nii-sama happy.

And yet something in him—the part of him that still would not let go of the events of Duelist Kingdom—told him he was wrong.

He tried to ignore it.

Nii-sama finally breathed out a sigh and glanced at Mokuba out of the corner of his eye. Mokuba stared back at him, trying not to look so eager for something he could not determine. Nii-sama sighed again and looked away.

"You should really get to bed."

Mokuba flicked his eyes to the floor, and his shoulders dropped. "I know."

Nii-sama laid down the card, slipping it onto a space on the smooth wooden desk next to his monitor, and went back to his typing.

Mokuba stood there for what felt like a very long time. He rocked back and forth on his feet, and he looked at his brother again and again. Nii-sama _knew _he was there. He had to. And yet he never looked up to tell him to go to bed again. He didn't glance at him or even shrug in his direction. Mokuba let out a slow breath.

"Nii-sama?"

"Hm?"

Nii-sama did not look up from his typing. He stared at the screen, and the glow reflected off of his eyes and made them flash the colors on the monitor as he changed documents and charts. Green, red, purple … orange, once. Mokuba felt like laughing at Nii-sama with orange eyes. He didn't.

He shuffled his feet and rubbed his arm. "What would you have done if …"

"What?" came his brother's curt question into the pause Mokuba had left.

Mokuba breathed in, and he felt his heart beating faster, so fast and hard against his chest that it almost hurt.

"… what if I hadn't been rescued from … from Pegasus?"

The typing stopped.

"_What?_"

Nii-sama didn't look at him, but Mokuba knew he was listening. He kept himself from taking a step back. His eyes shifted about the dark room which his eyes had now adjusted to. "What would you do?"

"You're here now." Nii-sama only took a second to answer. Mokuba caught sight of the bookshelf near the wall, and with all the shadows following him he could imagine a face, and growling. Horrible silence. "You _were _rescued."

"I know. But what if I hadn't been?"

The growling he knew he was imagining got louder, and he told himself it was the air conditioner. A glance at the desk found Nii-sama's hands twitching over the keys every few seconds. He didn't seem to notice it. He turned his face to look at the computer screen. His eyes betrayed nothing, but his lips pursed.

"This isn't the time for hypothetical questions, Mokuba."

Mokuba stepped forward, and he didn't realize it until it was done. "Just tell me. Please."

Nii-sama turned his head, and his blue-ish eyes that glowed under the light of the computer looked scary, even though they showed only the stoic normalcy to which Mokuba was so used. Those eyes burned into him, and a little part of Mokuba wanted to turn around and leave the room and hide under the covers in his bed and forget this had ever happened.

His brother sighed, so heavy, so slow, and he only broke the gaze for an instant.

"I'd come get you."

"What if you couldn't?"

"What?"

The sharpness in Nii-sama's voice caught him more than before, even though his voice was closer to its typical tone this time. Mokuba felt the bubbling, swirling emotions within himself, and he imagined that they were Nii-sama's instead of his. His eyebrows furrowed and he wished so much that the question would come out like he wanted, that he could just say it and leave it at that.

He had to do this.

He swallowed and felt the lump in his throat. "What if Pegasus … let you go but kept me?"

Nii-sama did not break the gaze this time. He blinked, only once, as if he had forgotten to blink for a minute and had only realized it when his eyes started to hurt. Then he just stared again. Mokuba didn't dare spare a glance at his hands which still hovered over the keyboard. He imagined them twitching now, more fervently than before.

"He didn't," Nii-sama almost whispered, like the words stung him as each syllable slipped past his lips. Something flashed across his eyes. "He got _both _of us, remember?"

Mokuba swallowed again.

"I know." His voice _was _a whisper, and it carried into the dark room like a voice in the scary movies Mokuba knew he wasn't supposed to watch. He scrunched up his face and stared into his brother's eyes. "But what would you do? Go back to KaibaCorp? Just … just keep running the company without me?"

"Of course I wouldn't."

It was faint, and hoarse, and it made something in Mokuba shiver.

"You don't mean that."

Nii-sama's brow lowered. "Of course I do."

"You don't!"

There was something tense in his face, and it pushed against his eyes, trying to get out. He wouldn't let it. He _couldn't _let it. He was going to be strong. Strong like he wanted to be. Strong like he never was. But his voice trembled.

"You … you'd be a lot better off if I wasn't here!"

His brother's hand was on his desk now, and it squeezed the wood so the edge was digging into his skin, and Mokuba almost thought it was going to bleed. Nii-sama almost, but not quite, jumped from his chair. "What the—what are you talking about, Mokuba?"

The heaviness within Mokuba grew now. It was thick, choking, restraining, but he shoved it back. He shoved it away and stared his big brother in the face, even when he felt his own eyes shining with the warmth he wished so badly would go away. His brother merely a dark form before him under the glowing light of the monitor.

"If I wasn't here, you wouldn't have had to rescue me from Pegasus! You could just … run your company, do what _you _want, and you wouldn't have to worry about me!"

Heavy. Sting. Images rushing before his eyes, standing in front of the orphanage gripping his brother's hand. Just them. All alone. All alone with no one left but themselves.

He drew in a breath, and it shook and felt like a sob. "If I wasn't here … maybe Kaa-sama …"

The words trailed into nothing.

The only sounds left in the room were the faint huffs of breathing. The breathing of Nii-sama, which was almost so quiet as to disappear into the darkness, and his own, which still trembled no matter what he did to steady it. He reached up and rubbed his arms and the fabric of his pajamas which felt stiff and smooth against his skin.

"You'd …" Another breath. "… you'd be better off without me, Nii-sama."

His breathing steadied, at last, the most he knew he would be able to steady it. He clung to his arms as if it would offer some form of comfort, and looking at the yellow sleeves he suddenly thought he looked very childish standing here in a fancy home office with his brother dressed up in his best business coat, and him standing there in _pajamas. _

The darkness soaked into him, and it was both comforting and frightening at the same time. The bookshelf by the wall didn't look like a monster. It just looked like a big foreboding shadow that snarled at him but would never dare attack.

"Mokuba."

The voice was unreadable, and Mokuba kept his head dropped and fixed his gaze to the floor.

"Mokuba, come here."

Mokuba took one slow step forward and looked up.

Nii-sama's eyes had once again come to meet his. Something had changed in them. He couldn't for the life of him figure out _what, _but _something _had changed. The blue eyes suddenly looked like something, someone, from far off in the past. Someone he had almost forgotten. Someone he had almost thought he had to forget.

He _had._

He breathed.

Nii-sama's eyes grew narrow and serious.

"Do you think I went to rescue you because I thought I _had _to?"

Mokuba felt that gaze burning into him. It wasn't a completely unfamiliar sense, but all more often he saw the gaze boring into the faces, into the very cores, of Nii-sama's opponents. Into Yuugi, though to him it was never phasing. Into the employees when they did something stupid or silly.

But there was nothing condescending about the emotions swirling in Nii-sama's eyes now. There was emotion, and so much of it, but nothing he could read, nothing he could pick out and define.

He bit the inside of his lip, and he tried to keep himself from blushing from the vague hints of embarrassment that spotted within him. "Well …"

"Do you really think that?" Nii-sama leaned forward in his big important chair, and for a moment it looked more like one of those small wooden chairs at the orphanage that he had so long outgrown. His gaze did not falter. The deep undefined feeling within them stayed. "After all we've been through?"

The darkness made way for memories to bounce back and forth in Mokuba's head. The memories that smiled at him, the memories that laughed. Then the memories that chuckled with a scary smile and grabbed him from behind and dragged him away. Dragged him far away no matter how hard he fought to get back.

And that hand reaching out for him in the shadows, the hand that refused to let go.

"You … you wouldn't have had to go through all that … if it wasn't for …"

Something in Nii-sama snapped.

"Mokuba … listen to me," he broke in, after Mokuba's words had long trailed off into the nothingness he felt deep within himself.

Mokuba stared at his brother. He stared into those eyes that had once been big and glimmering, and he almost saw the carefree child who said he would be his father, who said he would always protect him.

The longer he stared into his eyes which glowed in the artificial light, the more he noticed they had begun to gleam. Almost with something new that had not been there before. Nii-sama looked away, only for a moment, but he broke that stare and at last, Mokuba could see him.

"I …" Nii-sama swallowed like there was something in his throat. His voice sounded forced. Shaky. Even though he looked the same as before. "I don't know what I'd do … if I ever …"

Mokuba knew he was imagining it. He knew he had to be letting his mind get out of control and making it up. But he thought, he really, truly thought, that he heard Nii-sama choke down tears building behind his eyes.

"… if I ever lost you," Nii-sama whispered, and the words shattered the dark with pain. He pursed his lips and looked at the ground. "If I _had _lost you."

It was a moment later that Mokuba dared to take another step forward. They were very close now, right by the big chair, and yet that infinite space hovered between them.

"'Cause I'm your brother?"

Nii-sama broke the gaze, if only for that split instant, and his head shook, so fervently and so briefly that the meaning in it came off in waves.

"No."

Mokuba could almost feel something inside him drop. Almost. But it didn't have time. Before he could even register what he had been told, he felt the terribly, wonderfully unfamiliar feeling of two older hands wrapping themselves around his back and pulling him against his brother's chest in a tight and crushing embrace.

He stood there, for a moment, listening to the sounds of their breathing and the faint thumping of both their hearts close together. He felt the arms hold him tighter, like they had not done in years, not even when he had been rescued, and he heard Nii-sama drew a shaky, oh so unlike him breath.

"You're my best friend."

Something in Mokuba, deep inside, suddenly felt warm, and with a smile he could not keep away, he wrapped his arms around his brother and hugged him back.

The moment was not long. It couldn't be long, as if there was something in the laws of physics that prevented the moment Mokuba wished could have lasted forever. But the time it lasted, though it was short, was enough.

The arms loosened around his back, and Mokuba let go and took a step away from the chair. He missed that old feeling he had not felt in years, from the memories of clinging to his big brother in the middle of a storm or after a nightmare, and feeling truly safe. But this memory was clear, and by everything he knew, he was not going to let it go.

Nii-sama breathed once or twice, changing breaths, before he looked Mokuba in the eyes.

"You should get to bed." Words stern, and yet tinted with a gentleness not heard in a long time. "You have school tomorrow."

Mokuba stared.

"And I have to _go?_"

Nii-sama sighed, but he couldn't seem to keep back the hint of a chuckle that slipped into his breath as he did so. He half-rolled his eyes. "You skip enough already to stay at the company, Mokuba, you have to go _sometime._"

"_You _don't."

"Yeah, well … I already know most of what they teach, anyway."

Mokuba crossed his arms over his chest and smirked. "So do I."

"Just go to bed, will you?"

The words were still stern. But they were tinged with the affection Mokuba remembered from their early days in the orphanage. Before Gouzaburou. Before thoughts of running a multinational corporation had even crossed his brother's mind. Back when all that mattered was the two of them, and making sure they were alright, and would always be together.

Mokuba smiled. "Yeah."

He turned away from the desk and the computer and his brother without another thought, and he walked into the darker portion of the office. He walked past the bookshelf by the wall, and it was dark and shadowed, but it was still a bookshelf when he stepped over to brush his fingers against its edge. His eyes noted all the telling shapes and forms in the room, and suddenly the computer's light did not seem so foreboding.

He looked back once, as he stood by the door, and he smiled, even though his brother was not looking.

"Goodnight, Nii-sama."

Nii-sama did not look up from the typing he had already begun, but Mokuba knew the nod he gave was meant for him. "Mm."

Mokuba shook his head, just a little, and placed his hand on the knob of the door. He paused. Little ideas flickered in his mind, bouncing, laughing, and his lips twitched once again into a smile that held just a bit of a smirk. He looked to the desk.

"Nii-sama?"

A sigh. "Mokuba …"

"How about 'Battle City'?"

Nii-sama looked up from his computer—or maybe it was again the card—and peered at Mokuba across the room. His eyebrows furrowed and his eyes blinked.

"What?"

Mokuba shuffled his feet, but not out of worry. His hands clasped and fiddled behind his back, and his turned up into a smile he doubted could really be seen. "For the tournament name. 'Battle City.'"

There was a long pause. Nii-sama looked at him, and Mokuba looked back, and at last, Nii-sama returned to his computer and let the glow illuminating from its surface reflect off his young eyes.

"I'll think about it."

Mokuba just smiled and nodded. Then he opened the door and headed off to sleep.


End file.
